50 Shades of Drake 1 and 2

50SOD II: Chapter Forty-Five

    The room was dark. Clothes no longer separated them since he had undressed himself before bed. They lie side by side, staring at each other in a room bathed in silence. Aubrey had bared his heart to Destiny. He had admitted that he needed her. That couldn't have been easy for him to admit. And no matter what she was feeling, or how much time she felt she needed away from him, she couldn't walk away from him when he needed her. She'd looked him in the eyes and had seen a wounded little boy. Someone who was afraid of losing her and willing to do anything to keep her to stay.

    So he stood before her with pain in his eyes and his heart on his sleeve. He had told her that she had to fulfill her contract and stay. What had her response been? The last time he did this, I cried, she remembered while she looked at him. That was after he brought another woman into his condo. I cried last time, but this time I said, "Okay. Okay, I'll stay." Because I want to be here for him, and because I never wanted to walk away from him in the first place. I just... needed time to sort out my own thoughts. I guess...I guess I can do that during the week, like he suggested. Even though whenever he's around, it's hard for me to think clearly and objectively. Whenever he's around, all I want to do is be held by him. All i want to do is kiss him. Enjoy him. Make him smile and laugh. How do you distance yourself from someone when you feel like you need them just as much as they need you?

    He started to blink slowly, a sign that he would fall asleep soon. Stubbornly he fought sleep, like a little kid who wanted to stay up later than their bedtime.

    Fighting the urge to smile, she said, "I want to make sure you understand that I do not judge you for liking what you like. No matter what words I chose while I was speaking. I love you. And I respect you. And I respect the things that interest you. I just...freaked out."

    He didn't respond, just continued to stare at her.

    "This lifestyle is new to me. And I should have asked you a lot more questions before signing the contract, I know I should have." She paused and lowered her eyes. "There are reasons why I didn't."

    "Because you wanted to punish yourself for leading Chad on," he said knowingly. "You signed the contract without asking questions because you were punishing yourself. You became involved with me as a form of punishment."

    Her brows drew together.

    "I remember the conversation we had back in the hotel in D.C.," he told her. "During that conversation, I told you that I didn't want you to view this as a punishment. I think you expected me to lay you across my lap every night and spank you. As if spanking you would be a fitting punishment for leading on a man and breaking his heart. I never wanted you to view a relationship with me that way. But when you signed the contract, without asking many questions, I knew that was why."

    They lapsed into silence for a few minutes.

    Then he said, "I shouldn't have let you sign the contract. But I did, because... because I loved you, even then. I figured that as long as you were in my life, and with me, that was all that mattered. That I could still ease you into the lifestyle slowly, to compensate for that fact that there was a lot about the lifestyle you still didn't know." His eyes fluttered closed and he was quiet for so long, she thought he'd fallen asleep. "I fucked up tonight. I know I did. I shouldn't have taken you there, not...not like that. When I originally planned to take you, I was just going to show you around. Let you warm up to the idea. But men are very visual creatures, Destiny. When a man discovers that the woman he cares for has kissed someone else or been intimate with someone else, it's like a running movie reel in their mind. They can't help but visualize it. Tonight...I felt like tonight would give me something else to picture. Those clubs...they're so intense. I felt like I needed something that intense to replace the visuals that have been running in my mind all week."